Mental Health Month ~ The Importance Of Protecting Our Minds

The enemy, whether you want to call it the devil, or deception, or the great battle between good and evil – attacks our minds. At least it starts there.

First of all, there is no clear definition of mental illness. We each have an estimated 80,000 thoughts per day, which I am sure would vary. But nevertheless, our thoughts alone cannot define us as being mentally ill, because no one knows what another person is thinking about.

Therefore, mental illness must be defined and assessed based on symptoms, and what a person expresses. More importantly, how the person expresses themselves, is an important indicator of mental health.

If we express ourselves intellectually, using language that is clear and straight-forward – we can hardly be accused of being out of control crazy. That is unless your opponents are extremely defensive over their own conduct. They resort to the lowest common denominator. “She’s Nuts! She is exposing me! Call the Medics! She wrote a book about it! Lock her up!”

If you watch documentaries on psychiatric hospitals, you see a wide range of behaviours that caused people to be admitted to psych facilities. Things like combative behaviours, uncontrolled cursing and screaming, the inability to take care of oneself, and overall disruptive behaviours. When taken to extremes, people will eat feces, drink urine, self-mutilate, etc.

There was even a twenty-five bed water intoxication ward in Riverview Hospital. The water on the ward had to be turned off, and controlled from the nursing station. The people on that ward would drink so much water, their electrolytes became imbalanced, and they became intoxicated. Even the toilets could not have any accessible water.

In a younger population, many of these psychiatric related illnesses and behaviours are related to drug usage. The combination of harsh chemicals, altered dopamine levels, and dramatic mood swings – changes a person’s neurochemistry. The situation is compounded further, by dynamics that led to the drug abuse and self medication in the first place.

In an older population, a high percentage of people remain sharp, sane, and cognitively intact up until the end of their lives. As people age, the chances of getting Alzheimer’s or dementia increases dramatically. But people with dementia are not mentally ill per se. They are afflicted with biological processes that alter their brain function, memory, and thought processes.

True mental illness in geriatrics is most often the outcome of frequent intermittent psych admissions over the course of the person’s lifetime. If a person has a history of repeated admissions, they often end up in cognitive decline, and deteriorate mentally as they age.

Many of the older patients in locked units, have a long history of admissions, and treatments with various neuroleptic drugs. When I worked a few years in LTC, I used to wonder how some of the people became so out of control. When you read their histories, you could see the breakdowns, and difficulty with coping with life’s stressors. People on long term psychiatric medications develop a myriad of movement disorders, and over time, show the many side effects of the drugs they have been taking to control their symptoms.

On the flip side of the coin, in the thirties and forties, and throughout history, there are countless victims of psychiatric abuse. This was when fascism reigned supreme, and psychiatry was used to punish people who were outspoken. Many people were committed to psych units without a lawful reason. All it took was the agreement, and signature of a doctor, and family member – to get a sane person locked up for good.

If my big brother could have done the same thing to me, he would have – long ago. Unfortunately, a percentage of ordinary, functional human beings, had their lives destroyed as a result of familial rejection and abuse. A disproportionate number of them were women. Men with mistresses who wanted to get rid of their wives. Women who wanted a divorce. Women who fought back. And especially women, who were an intellectual threat. In other words, women who might be smarter than their arrogant male dominant, more aggressive, and more powerful opponents. Their lives matter. Mine does not. At least that’s their simplistic view of their own superiority.

As far as functional people are concerned, most of us have anxiety, depression, mood changes, and periods of reduced, or increased activity. The point is – we do not spiral out of control, for reasons that are external or internal. As long as we maintain self-control – no one can claim we are mentally ill. Do our thoughts make us mentally ill? If someone does not agree with our thoughts – does that person have the right to claim we are mentally ill? If we express something another person does not want to hear, does that make us sick?

Conflicts and difference of opinions are all around us. Do we get to attack the mind and sanity of the person we are in conflict with? No – we do not. Stand firm. Do not let your mind be attacked for what you believe in.

People can be critical of behaviours that are unlawful, destructive, combative, aggressive, belligerent, etc. Those behaviours do indicate mental health disturbances, and they do get documented, either in police or health records.

But in the absence of unlawful or harmful conduct – no one has the right to attack our minds, and make a diagnosis, in order to win an argument, or to discredit our testimony. By our Constitution, Charter of Rights, and God-given rights, we are considered sane, until we prove otherwise.

Anyone who attacks another person’s mind and sanity, without presenting documented behaviours that support the accusation – is behaving in an unlawful and persecutory manner. No one gets to win a battle or conflict, simply by calling the opponent crazy. That is the stuff of movies, juvenile delinquents, misogynists, and fascists.

The dead giveaway is that when family is truly concerned about the mental health of a loved one, they offer support. They genuinely seek what it is they could offer, or do – to help the family member.

Alternatively, when an attack on the mental health is for punitive reasons – they shun and take things away. There is an absolute refusal to offer support, or to listen to the other side of the story. The big brother mentality is based on reward and punishment. You go along with the lies – you get rewarded. You don’t – you get punished. When accusations about mental health are tied to such unstable and deceptive anchors, the reasons become glaringly obvious.

My brother, and his former life – is all about secrets. Those secrets go right back to his youth, and the young Gellert girl he married. They got engaged at age sixteen, and married at eighteen. For the most part, Ron has tried to shut off all memory of his own unsavoury past, with an iron door, several feet thick. Ron and Sharon named the ritzy Vancouver “concept store” they bank rolled for their daughter, “Secret Location”. I think a few people who know Ron’s history, did a double take. The fact they would call the store Secret Location, is almost unbelievable.

Now they would have you believe that I simply won’t let go of the past. How can I with a two hundred and fifty pound teacher on my back? Seriously, I am not the one who created their delusion, and am not the one who refuses to let go. They will not let go. I have begged and pleaded with them. They repeatedly try to force the teacher relationship, give him access to me – and punish me for my obstinate refusal.

This family conflict has been ongoing, with every devious and manipulative trick in the book. Ron is the one behind all of it. Alongside the teacher, the two of them are a pair. I have been subjected to the backlash of punishment for refusing all contact with the teacher – for almost fifteen years now. The teacher has been contributing to punishment and control over my entire life. They still don’t get it, and are willing to risk reputations for an exploitive, old dog’s con.

Money is a powerful motive, and those with money wield power. It took many years for me to overcome the religious fundamentalist brainwashing I was subjected to as a teenager in small town Alberta. I really wish I would have known then, what I know now – about protecting my mind against such brazen assaults.

If the teacher would have obsessed over me secretly, without doing anything unlawful – one could not really accuse him of aberrant (and criminal) conduct. However, it is a provable fact, that he did act on his impulses, by stalking me outside of school, and using brute force to confine me. At the time, he covered his obsession by telling everyone he was going to adopt me (totally delusional).

He then escalated his behaviours and abusive conduct, by chasing me down, and forcing me into a car repeatedly – during my final semester of high school. He took me home with him for a night of brainwashing several times, over a three or four month period of time.

The teacher’s conduct is an example of someone who had deranged thoughts, and then acted on them. He was fanatically obsessed with a teenage student. He manifested his own psych disorder and unlawful, unprofessional behaviours, by actually carrying out the agenda he had schemed up with my older brother. The difference between sane and insane – is based upon conduct.

Since when does a teacher get to repeatedly tell a student that she is “his gift from God”?? He also drilled into me that my mother was wicked, and non-redeemable. He claimed she did not deserve to be my mother. She was a despicable, and an unworthy human being, without hope, according to this loon ball teacher.

In actual fact, our mother lived on a homestead with no running water, had five children in five years, and was in complete heart failure, by the time her fifth child was born. She was among the first five people in Canada, and the youngest, to have open heart surgery, at the age of twenty-three.

In most cases, the motive in stalking a teenage girl, is sexual assault. But I can assure you – an assault on the mind like he carried out, was every bit as devious and destructive as a sexual assault. In many ways, it is more destructive. To this day, my older brother (and Ledcor + the construction industry) have the entire family on side with his teacher pal.

I should be able to make the points succinctly by now. These guys need to know, they cannot simply call a person mentally ill, to cover up their own wrongdoing, and obvious psych disorders. My brother is a case. Some self examination and repentance would do him a world of good. That’s my hope for him anyway.

Most importantly, teachers do not get to attach themselves to a student for life, by making outrageous false adoption claims. This man would not take no for an answer. Ever. There is no relationship. Big brother still maintains this man is family to the core – in fact, much more so than I am. Yeah right. Like in the godfather.

People in a sane world – do not get forced into adoptions as adults. And men do not get to force themselves on women – who want nothing to do with them. Do we think most people would agree with those basic principles of human boundaries?

This whole saga has a long paper trail of documentation, and can be easily proven. My brother and Ledcor are so rich, they can afford high priced lawyers. They believe they wield so much power – they will never have to defend themselves. But – one day they will have to. Patience is a virtue.

Staying sane involves protecting ourselves, and protecting our minds, against the various onslaughts and attacks of those at enmity with us. These attacks occur when we are most vulnerable. They are not based on our best interests, but on the interests of the person doing the attacking. It is amazing how much money can buy – when it comes to ganging up on a person, to protect a high powered executive.

We need the full armour of protection. Deception, false accusations, shaming, preying upon the vulnerable – do not come from a place of love or goodness. Our biggest warning throughout the ages is “do not be deceived”. That warning is more relevant today than ever before in history.

Mother’s day is a time to be thankful for who brought us into this world. No mother is perfect. But without our mothers, we would not even be here. One of the Ten Commandments is to honour our father and mother. It is one of the more important things we will carry with us to eternity.

Years ago I read a sobering quote. It went something like this: “The present moment does not recede into the past as one may think. It is projected into the future – where it waits patiently to meet us at a later date.”

The 2021 mantra should not be “Stay Safe”. It should be “Stay Sane”. It takes dedication!